Paul Walker • Aug 15, 2014 •
From the Economist magazine comes this piece on China'a subsidies to ship building. In 2006 China enacted a “Long and Medium-Term Plan” [read subsidies to shipyards] to enlarge its shipping industry by 2015.Yet economists’ views on subsidies have hardened over time. China’s policy provides subsidies both for the construction of ships themselves and for the building … Read More
Donal Curtin • Aug 05, 2014 •
Last week the Business Council of Australia released a report, Building Australia's Comparative Advantage, which in turn built on another report, Compete to Prosper: Improving Australia’s global competitiveness, which they had commissioned from McKinsey Australia. I haven't read either of them fully yet, and I'm not too sure whether I buy into the "let's aggregate industries into globally competitive … Read More
Paul Walker • Aug 04, 2014 •
A interesting new NBER working paper on Measuring the Unequal Gains from Trade by Pablo D. Fajgelbaum and Amit K. Khandelwal. The abstract reads:Individuals that consume different baskets of goods are differentially affected by relative price changes caused by international trade. We develop a methodology to measure the unequal gains from trade across consumers within countries … Read More
Paul Walker • Mar 12, 2014 •
Not what you may think.The Economist's blog Free Exchange has a posting that looks at research on the effects of offshoring and its results may well not be what you expected.The Free Exchange posting looks at new research that draws on a U.S. pilot study utilising the 2010 National Organisations Survey (NOS). Read More
Donal Curtin • Feb 25, 2014 •
There's been quite a lot of media coverage about who said what to whom in the supposed stoush between Hugh Laurie and Immigration New Zealand over a work visa - see, for example, Hugh Laurie's spat with Immigration NZ - and I've been wa... Read More
Bill Kaye-Blake • Feb 12, 2014 •
I have avoided discussing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations, because it’s complex and secret and yet to be decided. But a statement from Tariana Turia, Associate Minister of Health, leads me to comment. Turia’s plain packaging for cigarettes bill just passed its first vote. The bill is intended to reduce the sale of cigarettes by making […] … Read More
Paul Walker • Sep 26, 2013 •
In a previous post on the history of globalisation I quoted from Elhanan Helpman's book Understanding Global Trade. With regard to long-distance trade Helpman noted just how ancient trade is, While long-distance trade plays an essential role in modern economies, it was also a salient feature of economic development after the Neolithic Revolution, as hunter-gatherers evolved into sedentary … Read More
Paul Walker • Sep 24, 2013 •
Outsourcing is still a controversial practice in most countries around the world. This is just as true for emerging markets as it is for the industrialised economies. The effects of outscouring are increasingly understood for industrialised countries but what of emerging markets? A new column at VoxEU.org looks at the effects of outsourcing on firm-level innovation in emerging … Read More
Paul Walker • Sep 09, 2013 •
Concerns about the effects of offshoring around the world, including Europe, focus mainly on the loss of factory jobs, but some also worry that innovation will also be affected in a bad way. A new column at VoxEU.org shows that offshoring firms employ more people in R&D and design, introduce more frequently new products, and invest … Read More
Paul Walker • Jul 30, 2013 •
Or so argue Amrita Narlikar and Dan Kim in a recent article in Foreign Affairs. A short summary of the Narlikar and Kim article reads,Despite the claims of its champions, the fair-trade movement doesn't help alleviate poverty in developing countries. Even worse, it is just another direct farm subsidy of the kind most conscientious consumers despise. Read More